Category Archives: News

We’re passionate about empowering people, especially young people to be online! So today we’re sharing our top tips on how to stay safe whilst using the internet.

Never reveal your passwords to other people. Choose a password that is really strong by using a mix of letters and numbers. Make sure you change them regularly.

Make sure you think before you post. Never post anything you wouldn’t want your parents or teachers to read. As soon as you press send, the information/image is no longer private.

Be kind. If you think your post could upset someone, don’t post it.

Be really careful about what you share online. Don’t give clues about where you live in either the information or the images you post.

Make sure you check your privacy settings regularly. Bear in mind that you might think you’re only sharing something amongst close friends, but that isn’t always the case.

Be careful who you talk to online. If someone you don’t know tries to add you as a friend, ignore them and block them. Don’t give people online your address and phone number.

Social media platforms have an age limit for a reason. It is to keep young people safe. The fab people at Action for Children made this fab infographic detailing age limits across all major social media channels.

If you would like to book Rachel to come talk to children or parents about staying safe online, please contact us here!

We are delighted to announce that once again we will be sponsoring Five Rise Beer Festival. Last year the festival raised over £2000 for local causes and we are very proud to have been a part of that.

Taking place over the 2nd and 3rd June at the Bingley Arts Centre, the Five Rise Beer Festival is organised by the Rotary Clubs of Bingley, who have raised almost £100,000 over the last 3 years supporting worthy causes locally, nationally and internationally. Taking place at Bingley Arts Centre, around 70 real ales and ciders from all over the UK will be available to try out.

A report released today by the Children’s Commissioner Anne Longfield entitled Growing Up Digital has stated that children are left to “fend for themselves” against the pitfalls of being on the internet such as online bullying or grooming.

Ms Longfield stated “The internet is an incredible force for good, but it is wholly irresponsible to let them roam in a world for which they are ill-prepared”. It is felt that social media applications in particular have a wealth of difficult to understand Terms and Conditions which leaves children unsure as to what they’re signing up for, including “hidden clauses” waiving privacy rights and allowing content children have posted to be sold.

One of the recommendations in the report was that children should study “digital citizenship” to learn about their rights and responsibilities online, so they are prepared for online activities. At Aire Media we’re passionate about online safety and offer a variety of training sessions for children and their parents. We feel it is really important that children are given the tools to harness the full potential of all the wonderful things the internet has to offer whilst maintaining their own safety.

Our rules for online safety remain: –

Take note of age regulations on social media platforms. Whilst they seem arbitrary, we believe that children aged 13+ are much more emotionally equipped to deal with online safety than a younger child.

Always go through the Terms and Conditions of new sites your children are signing up to with them and ensure both you and they understand the clauses they are agreeing to.

Always make sure your child has their privacy settings as high as possible.

Keep dialogue open with your children – ensure they feel comfortable in discussing what they’re doing online with you.

We wrote an in-depth piece on social media safety entitled SOCIAL MEDIA FOR CHILDREN FRIEND OR FOE. If you would like to talk to us more about what we can offer in terms of advice for children or how we can work with parents to ensure they’re fully versed in keeping their children as safe as possible on social media, please get in touch with us.

As it is the season of goodwill we’ve decided to offer our first ever competition!

What’s the prize?

The prize is one of our Digital Marketing Reports with a value of £75. The report takes an in-depth look at your business and how you’re using social media and gives advice and tips to ensure you’re getting the best out of your marketing. We also take a look at your website and again offer expert advice on how to make the most out of your online presence.

What do you have to do?

Well we have two ways you can enter. Simply visit and like our Facebook page and like the pinned post and comment with the name of your business . We won’t ask you to share as a condition of entering, but it would be nice if you feel so inclined!

Your other option is to visit our Twitter account give us a follow and retweet the pinned post.

We will draw the competition using a random generator on 31st December 2016 and the prize will be available from Tuesday 3rd January 2017 for the winner to use when they’re ready!

Opening in September 2015 and based in the pretty Yorkshire village of Eldwick, Avenue Boutique is owned by Caroline who has over 16 years experience, receiving training from some of the country’s top stylists and colour technicians. Joining Caroline at Avenue Boutique is stylist Cheryl, a previous colleague of Caroline’s and the two have created a really exciting and dynamic new salon.

We are delighted to be working alongside Avenue Boutique providing digital marketing and look forward to being able to share their amazing talent to a wide audience.

It has long been our ethos at Aire Media that we would like to help local businesses achieve a place in the community and we are thrilled to be forging a partnership with another Bingley-based company.

The popular messaging service WhatsApp has announced it will be sharing user date, including phone numbers with their parent company Facebook.

Ostensibly this is to improve the WhatsApp user experience by linking you with friends quicker. However it is also intended to mean a more streamlined ad experience and for companies to be able to find your details and contact you via WhatsApp.

WhatsApp are quick to reassure users that their data will only be shared with the parent company and that chats protected by end-to-end encryption will remain private and can only be seen by the individuals concerned and not Facebook, WhatsApp and their users.

Despite the fact it appears this is a sweeping change, there will be two ways to opt out of this data sharing when the changes are introduced. The first will be when the app updates, a new User Agreement will appear. Instead of checking the “Agree” box, check “Read More” and uncheck the box that says “Share My WhatsApp Account Information With Facebook”.

The other option will be to go into Settings on WhatsApp and enter the Accounts tab. From there you will be able to uncheck the “Share My WhatsApp Account Information With Facebook” box.

Hot on the heels of the addition of the Twitter Moments feature and the news that character limits could be expanded, Twitter has once again sent the rumour mills into overdrive.

A rumour is doing the rounds that Twitter will soon be run by an algorithm. This means that rather seeing your timeline chronological order, Twitter will reorder them as per what it believes you want to read in your timeline, much like Facebook.

Buzzfeed suggest the change could come in as early as next week, with a test run on a small number of users going well enough for content to be distributed more widely.

Predictably Twitter appears to have gone into meltdown over this rumour with the trending topic #RIPTwitter. Suffice to say, the majority of Twitter users seem unhappy at the potential change.

So what do you think – will this affect the way you use Twitter? It certainly seems to be paving the way for a more monetized use of Twitter – will business have the facility to promote their tweets into your timeline via paid ads?

One of the most requested features on Facebook over recent years has been the addition of a “dislike” button to run alongside the “like” feature.

Well it seems Facebook have been listening. Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg confirmed in a conference call that “pretty soon” the new Reactions feature would be available to its 1.5 billion users.

Mark Zuckerberg went on to discuss that giving a range of options rather than a simple opposite emotion to the LIke button, added “a little bit of complexity” saying “when you only have a Like button, if you share a sad piece of content or something that makes you angry, people may not have the tool to react to it”.

The new Reactions feature is currently on trial in several countries and will involve Emojis for “love”, “wow”, “haha”, “sad” and “angry”.

Our Director Rachel Barratt said “I think this is the next logical step for Facebook – it provides the user with a more nuanced and subtle experience. And Emojis are certainly a popular way of communicating!”

Let us know what you think, does this get the traditional Facebook thumbs up from you? Or is it a poorly thought out gimmick?

Hot on the heels of Twitter implementing their new “Moments” feature, which you can read about here, there is a story growing that Twitter plan to increase their character limit from 140 to 10000, which is the same character limit their direct message feature uses, Re/Code have reported.

I don’t think anyone can be unfamiliar with this sight – you’re composing the perfect tweet, when suddenly the red numbers light up and you have to chop down your message whilst still retaining some vestige of grammar. It cannot be denied that at times the 140 character limit can be challenging, but it also makes for dynamic messages.

There is no official release date for this project, which it has been reported as being named “Beyond 140” inside the company, but it is thought that the changes, should they go ahead, will be implemented in the first quarter of 2016.

Whether this comes to fruition or not, it is certainly something that will result in furious discussion amongst Twitter uses.

So, your thoughts? How would this new feature affect your usage of Twitter? Let us know!